Doubt
by The Tesseract Seraph
Summary: A lingering sense of doubt, heartache, and the faint smell of cherries. A moment alone with Albedo on the Song of Nephilim.


Author's Note: Written under the influence (of Depswa). I don't own Xenosaga, or Albedo (much as I wish otherwise). This is vaguely AU for a sequence of events that diverge from the actual canon of the game, but hopefully it's nothing too disruptive. Enjoy the flippiness of the piece. 

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Doubt

Alone at last.  
It's quiet here. It's always quiet in the dark halls of the Song of Nephilim, except when that Song--that glorious Song, the Song of Songs--is let to play, to ring its eerie, sweet music out through all space. Only a select few can hear it, but they always prove important. Whosoever could hear it could be driven mad; whosoever was driven mad by that sweet Song was so driven by the glimpse of something other that it provided. And those who could see, had the chance to transcend. Most humans would never hear it. A precious few could, though; but it was the Life Recycling Variants, the Realians, the U.R.T.V.s, the hundred-hundred other varieties of mutant that were far more susceptible--some could infer, perhaps, because they never really had belonged in the world of men. No more than the Gnosis that the Song called to it.  
But the Song is not playing now. The only thing that echoes in the quiet halls of the spaceship that bears the same name is a simple memory of the Song of Songs, lilting and sweet but not the same aching purity of the real thing. Even so, Albedo can still hear it; that tremuluous celestial chorus that--it seems--sings only for him, at his behest, as if he were a king in truth instead of a lost boy pretending to be more than he is.  
Because that's all Albedo is, isn't it? A twelve-year-old boy who got in over his head, who reached beyond the bounds of wisdom for knowledge and touched the things he shouldn't have. Oh, say what he would about Rubedo's abandonment, the deaths of his brothers, the shattering of their mental link--at the heart of it, Albedo had begun his descent into madness long before the Miltian Conflict. The Song had only accelerated the decay; the sudden _snap_ as the U.R.T.V.s had fallen out of the link and died all around him only pushed to completion what had begun months before. All those months before--when he'd taken a gun in his hand, and shot himself to prove his own immortality, both to himself and his brothers.  
Rubedo hadn't been impressed, and had proven the stronger of the two, even given his little brother's immortality. Frightened, Albedo had retreated in on himself, trapped in the introvert's world of imagination and paranoia. Only the love and faith his brothers still had for him and in him kept him from falling further and further down the introspective slope, lost in the inner chasms of his own mind. But the feeling of abandonment, of separateness from a world that broke down, died, and inevitably moved on, while he was doomed to be forever alive--no matter how sweetly the U.R.T.V.s had loved each other, Albedo could still look forward to a time when they would die, and he would not. And he would be alone, and afraid. There was no one, not even Rubedo, who he could express that fear to--no one who would take him seriously, who would understand the plight of an indestructible child in a world that was all too fragile. He'd learned the bitterness of being unique early in life, and that just because he shared his mind with all his brothers did not mean they understood him on the level that mattered.  
So he pulled away. And just as he had foreseen, the inevitable abandonment had come to pass--though it was much faster, and much more frightening than he had anticipated. It was heartbreaking. It was--  
--Sweet. He had met the Devil that day, and seen the face of God, and felt the breadth and depth of his own true powers. Even as his brothers had died around him, and his most beloved had proven the Judas, the betrayer, Albedo saw a glimpse of a world beyond the blood and pain of Miltia--a world that transcended mortality, even as he did. It was a world where he could find _acceptance_, the safety to trust he so craved. It was somewhere where he would _not_ be alone, no matter how much longer he would have to carry the banner of vengeance. It was a prize he could bring to lay at Rubedo's feet, to atone for his own past, and to convince Rubedo to repent for betraying them all into madness and death.  
--And it still hurt. They were not meant to be alone. _Albedo_ was not meant to be alone. All he had ever truly craved was the acknowledgement of his older brother--a kind glance, from Rubedo to him. Trust. Friendship. _Love_. The completion of his halved being, by his red-haired sibling who was more courageous, and kinder, and fairer by far than Albedo, petty and quirky and awkward as a new-born bird. That's all he'd tried to show Rubedo with the lesson of the gun--that he, too, was special, and wanted his own unique powers to be as respected in Rubedo's eyes as Rubedo's manipulation of time was in his. He wanted to be told that _he_, the empathic brother, the pale, sensitive, shy one, was every bit as good in his own way as his brighter sibling.  
He hadn't gotten it. And in the end, that little shard of loneliness driven into his heart had led him to more loneliness yet, until his whole world was assembled of silences and the absence of people. The rare times when he drifted back into human contact were blood-soaked and violent; even as he craved to be a part of that world, he had deeper needs--deeper psychosis--that drove him to destroy those around him to sate his own lusts. But those same rare times pierced Albedo's world of silence and emptiness like sunlight pierces gloom, and made a nice counterpoint to his self-imposed existence of bleakness and shadows.  
But now is not one of those times. As a creature of illusion and subtlety, used to hiding in shades and fractions of reality, Albedo can bear the sun for only so long. He'd been overexposed lately, overstretching his bounds and taunting chaos until the youth had retaliated and struck him down. That had _hurt_ as badly as Miltia, and left him weeping blood and crawling back to the only person he trusted to care. It was a sad irony that not only had Rubedo _not_ cared, but been surrounded by people who thought to capitalize on Albedo's weakness--and the madman was driven back out once more.  
Alone, always alone.  
It was a balm to his wounded soul, though. He was still weeping blood infrequently--though the crying wasn't so much driven by emotion as by something deeper, more instinctive. A reflex. Throwing up tears--or in this case, blood. Nothing he could stop, much less understand why it was happening. And Rubedo's answer to why had not proven satisfactorary, or soothing. But Albedo had come to expect no less from his older brother--the disappointment was as bitter and as deep as his lingering respect was. In any other person, these two things--the respect, the disappointment--would have eventually been reconciled, one discarded in favor of the other. But Albedo _could_ not reconcile them, could not put together the brother who was a traitor with the brother he loved, and so the cognitive dissonance ate away at what few stable splinters of his psyche there were.  
So it was that his retreat to Rubedo's home had left him once again feeling bitter and vindictive. The usual rage that had followed was unsatisfying; the Kirschwassers sacrificed to his madness more than he should have let die at the time. And yet, it had soothed a little of that feeling of hurt, and made him feel more in control.  
But as the thunderstorm gives way to spring rains, even Albedo's little orgies of destruction give way to moments of quieter thought. The madman lays sprawled on his throne crosswise, a dead Kirschwasser pooled in his lap like a broken toy. One clawed hand toys with her silver hair, winding it between his fingers, then petting and smoothing it feverishly back into perfect neatness. His eyes are on the vaulted ceiling, though--upward-turned to heaven, even if such a direction has no meaning in space. The slow, patient stroking of the Kirschwasser's hair is nothing more than an absent reflex, a form of haptic soothing for shattered nerves. A part of him focuses on that simple feeling, freeing the rest of him to think independent of madness.  
  
_I am in pain._  
It's a simple thought, almost trivial in its simplicity. Even the lowest of beings could register the stimulus humans interpreted as "pain", though it took a sentient mind to fully comprehend suffering. From that comprehension spun an intricate realization of reality, the ability to perceive that one was perceiving, and give labels to both the perception and the thoughts that erupted from it, as a seedling plant from its husk. It was something he glorified, this pain, and the ability it brought to clarify reality and transcend it. Something he worshipped, and took as his Eucharist--that sweet pain, that underwent a sublime transubstantiation into the sweeter realization of his own purpose in his shattered mind.  
And yet...he was in pain, and this pain was bitter to his tongue. So the statement of being is, for once, notable.  
_I am in pain._ And then, a moment later, in a half-remembered child's voice: _I hurt._ He frowns, gathering the Kirschwasser up in his arms as a child might a favorite blanket or toy. His hands tangle in her fine hair, his eyes drifting closed as he nuzzles his face against the top of her head. Already, the lingering warmth of her life is fading, leeching away into the chill of the Song. He can still feel a little of it, though, and remember the heartbeat that once went with it. Now he's left with only the fading husk of the girl that had once been, the faint dusky scent of cherries that clings to her silver hair reminding him of what he had killed. It, he remembered, had soothed the hurt for a while--killing her, that was. But now the hurt is back, and he can't chase it away as simply as he did before.  
So he cradles the dead Kirschwasser against his chest like the broken doll she is, trying to think his way out of the box he's found himself in again.  
  
_I hurt, and I don't want to._  
This was stranger than the idea of hurting itself. He drank pain like wine, lived on feelings of fear and apprhension as if they were bread and meat. He was an emotional vampire, a twisted empath, a masochist in the purest sense. But to find such emotions had lost their savor was unusual in the extreme. It provoked feelings of anxiety, and discontent with the purpose he'd lived with for fourteen years. It was such a precarious balance, to accept the fact he'd become a part of what he had been designed to oppose, and by so doing, opened himself to a realm of greater promise and power than he could have if he'd stayed true to himself. Lately, doubt has been swaying him--a niggling sense of doubt, that he may have left something behind that was sweeter by far than the twin promises of pain and power that he had been made on that fateful day.  
He didn't like it. He didn't like the feeling he had to endure this doubt with no sign of it ending. He didn't like the fact it made even more of his life an act, a play he put on for himself and others as he forged ahead to his purpose. A purpose that was diluted by that doubt.  
And so it spirals down ad nauseum. The question of this irreconcilable pain comes up--this heartache that he can't kill, that hurts so much he actually wants to die for once--only to be given the answer "doubt", and the solution "your purpose". But he's working toward his purpose, his purpose that might have something to do with the ache--&c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c.  
It's symptomatic of the disorganized schizophrenic to be trapped in this Gordian knots of his own thoughts. Though often high-functioning, Albedo is prone to his own madness snaring him, dragging him down, rendering him more helpless than he was when chaos struck him down. More helpless than when Rubedo snapped their link and the Song exerted all its seductive power upon him. More helpless--no, there were only those two incidents, that already begin to blur in his mind. chaos, the avenging angel perverted by darkness, overlaps for a moment with Rubedo--the protecting angel, his brother, perverted by doubt...his own paranoia...by...  
The Kirschwasser has grown truly cold now. She's not comforting at all. With a frustrated cry, Albedo throws her away from him, rolling off the throne and pacing several steps away. His body is wound tight as a spring, something he'd ordinarily work off in the sweet exertion of fighting, but he _can't_ now. There is no one TO attack, nothing he has to defend from an outside force. There is no satisfaction in the simple regimen of training, either, and so he can't escape this tension that builds in his belly and chest until it wraps around his throat with such impelling force that he must either sob or scream.  
He screams, then. He screams at the walls of the room as a tiger might roar at the bars of his cage, pacing and bristling and _screaming_ because there is nothing else TO do. Obscenities come the easiest, in a dozen different languages dead and alive. Then blaphemies. Simple acts of betrayal against God that become truly grandiose as the minutes wear on, as Albedo paces and shouts himself hoarse just to hear the sound of his own voice echoing off the walls. Villifying God. It becomes glorifying God somewhere along the line, then begging for forgiveness.  
His circuit around the room eventually leads him to collapse at the foot of his throne, and the begging gives way to giggling. "Oh, Rubedo, if only you could see me now...," are the only cogent words that escape his lips between the bouts of hysterical laughter. It _was_ funny, it _was_, in this deep ironic sense that only he could grasp. He who can laugh at himself shall never cease to be amused, and Albedo is almost always _amused_. Even in the face of the pain that eats away at his heart, he is still amused, still laughing at the joke he gets that no one else can understand. It was a palliative. It was--a drug.  
It's thus drunk on laughter that he decides pulling out an eye is a good idea. It takes only a moment to go from thought to action--hooking two clawed fingers into his right eye socket, and pulling the eye free with a sick sound of tearing flesh. The pain is an instant's flash of agony that tempers down into a low throb. Nothing new--he's gouged out his own eyes before, or had other people gouge them out in vain hopes it would leave him blind.  
Still giggling, he rolls the damaged eye between his thumb and forefinger. The sensory parallax this imparts--he can still _see_ with the eye, even if it's no longer in its socket--is for a moment both beautiful and disorienting. "An eye for an eye," he sing-songs under his breath, "will leave the whole world blind." He traps the violet eye between his thumb and forefinger once more, piercing it with his claws and letting the fluid inside leak out slowly, before grinding it to a smear between his fingers. A moment later, it regenerates in place, and he blinks once, before sighing. "...such transient rules, and hardly impartial...right, Rubedo?"  
The restlessness has subsided for the moment. He's content to sit at the base of his throne, staring off into the dark despite the discomfort it places on his back and shoulders. Something about this has been cathartic in some way, releasing the pent-up feelings that gambol through the shattered places of his mind. _I am in pain, but it doesn't bother me so much now._  
"I still miss you," he confesses to the darkness. "Even if I'll make you repent for your cowardice one of these days, and strangle you, my other half, I still miss you." He pauses, listening to the dying echoes. They fall away into silence, and he sits still for some fifteen minutes, listening to that silence for ghost voices that sometimes speak at these hours of the night. But there's nothing to hear, not even the creaking of the ship.  
When the shadows don't reveal their augery to him, Albedo resumes his interrupted speech to them:  
"What I'm doing is right. The inevitable--the proper!--conclusion of those events fourteen years ago. Everything that happened then needs to be recompensed. Everything--all those who were destroyed! They need an executor! They need someone to answer their blood, that cries out from the _dust_, Rubedo! The very **dust**! They--"  
His voice becomes hushed as he realizes he's begun shouting again. This isn't something he can shout; he knows that. No matter how great his ire, his frustration at his other half, there is no reason to interrupt the somnolence of his own throne room. He tempers his voice, breathing out and focusing on what it is he must say.  
"--must be avenged. --Musn't they? Or did you judge them, Rubedo? Should I respect your judgment?" Albedo giggles, rising from his seated position and stalking over to the nearest candelabra. He reaches up, touching the wick of an unlit candle with an extended claw. It bursts into light, quickly followed by all its brethren. He takes one down from its place, toying with the fire and melting wax with equal ease. "...but you're imperfect, an incomplete consciousness--you don't know what it is you're fighting for, do you?" He crushes the candle out, throwing the ball of wax away from him.  
"Just your own survival, my other half! You don't remember a half of what you are! It's so--damn--IRONIC! That you're FIGHTING to survive, but not even for your own--" Once more, he gets too loud, and lowers his voice to a bare whisper. "--self."  
He paces away from the wall, stepping over the Kirschwasser's body without even noticing it. One heel falls on her extended hand, shattering the tiny bones. But she's past feeling, and he's past hearing the seriatim cracks that ring through the room. Does the event even happen then? As far as Albedo's concerned--no.  
"...I will make you remember, my other half. I miss you so much, but the you that I miss is--gone. I will fix that. I will!" He stops, throwing his head back and cackling, long and loud. "Oh yes, my Rubedo! My dear one! In my hands is the power, the glory--I have been--I am--" His voice trails off, violet eyes glowing in the darkness as he looks down. "...Am I?" he murmurs--then moves with abrupt violence, slamming a fist into one of the walls with such force the metal crazes from stress, and his knuckles fracture.  
He draws back, an interrogative thoughtfulness falling across his face. It takes effort to spread his shattered fingers, and he watches with avid curiosity as the bone knits back together. "...a sinless lamb...with not a broken bone...no," he finally murmurs, closing his whole hand into a fist once more--then shaking that fist to the sky, head thrown back and a savage smile on his face. "SACRIFICED, RUBEDO!" he crows. "I WAS SACRIFICED, AND I STILL LIVE! SEE THE MARKS IN MY PALMS, AND SIDES--" He pauses, for breath, drawing it in with a sound quite like a sob.  
"...wherefore do you doubt?" he finally murmurs, voice cracking. "O ye of little faith...Rubedo."  
Albedo turns away from the wall, staring off into the dark once more. There's nothing evident there to anyone but him--and he sees the shape of a red-haired child in a familiar coat, blue eyes wide with wonder and startlement at his mad brother. "I'm sorry," he addresses the phantasm. "But it must be this way, Rubedo. You must--understand me, when I say that the only way to ascend--is through sacrifice, and only with our pain we are made complete. Right? You--come to me, and I will show you--the fulfillment of your dreams..." He trails off, extending a hand toward the illusion...and watching it shiver away.  
He stands for a long moment, staring at where Rubedo was...before returning to his throne and taking a seat, resting his chin on one fisted hand and narrowing his purple eyes at the darkness.  
  
At long last, he reaches out mentally. // Thirteen, come here, // he calls silently, to one of his favorites. He doesn't acknowledge her as a favorite, for to do that would mean he'd need to eliminate her, and he is so jealous of his toys. But nevertheless, thirteen, among all his Kirschwassers, has won some special measure of his favor. And she seems to understand this implicitly--for why else would she come so quickly at his call, running through the halls of the Song to meet her master on his throne.  
She enters. He is silent up until she comes forward to kneel at his feet, bowing her head. "--No, come closer," he says, simply. She rises, and he reaches forward to hook a clawed hand under her chin, drawing her toward him. "Sit with me, thirteen," he instructs, voice a purr as he guides her to sit on his lap. "Sit with me, and be very silent while I think."  
The spasm of his madness has been quelled for the moment, the unexplained aching doubt boxed away until there's a more opportune chance--which there never will be--for him to address it. For now, he has another coup to plan, even as he wraps his arms around thirteen, burying his face in her silver hair and taking a deep breath of the sweet scent of cherries. Her heartbeat, quick and frantic as a bird's, beats against his chest, soothing him into a state of day-dreaming. Here, he can plot to bring about an end to bitter things.  
He's not quite so alone now.  



End file.
